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CHAPTER 2

STEP 2: NEW BEHAVIORS

I THINK IT’S safe to assume that if you have picked up this book, you have something in your life that you want to change. The only way to make the Peak Performance method work is by taking what you read and acting on it. That is why Step 2, New Behaviors, is essential to your success. New behaviors become habits that create new skills. If you want to change your life, I guarantee there are new skills that you will need to develop or strengthen. You must identify and prioritize the areas you need to grow and intentionally dedicate time to those skill-building behaviors. This process establishes your fundamentals—the new behaviors that you can build on to develop the big habit changes that are essential to your success.

When you are building your fundamental habits, start small. Find a few smaller new behaviors that will be essential for your end goal, but will give you quick results. These behaviors are just your first step to behavior changes. They need to be small enough to be easily implemented and maintained. They need to give you quick results because you are re-training your brain to crave this type of change. If you don’t see results, you will lose your motivation to change. By making your first step small changes, you start laying the foundation for bigger changes. The little habits developed by small changes will need to be involuntary when it comes time to implement bigger changes.

Being a baseball player with big dreams of reaching the major leagues, I spent countless hours on the field drilling the basics. Practicing the fundamentals and developing skills that were essential to becoming a world-class pitcher. Learning the small techniques enabled me to learn the big pitches. Once you have the basics down, the fundamentals of your discipline are ingrained in you, and they become a part of you. Then when someone explains the method behind the new “pitches,” you inherently know which small pieces and skills will make up the new “pitch” that you are aiming to perfect. You are confident that you have the tools to succeed; you just need to practice the new behaviors.

Think back to when you were a child, and your parents asked you every day if you brushed your teeth. Now fast-forward to today. You brush your teeth every day in the same routine without any thought. It has become a habit and a good one at that. Habits separate successful people from unsuccessful people. Leadership guru John C. Maxwell was quoted in the book The Compound Effect, “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret to your success is found in your daily routine.” New behaviors done consistently over time will produce great habits and great results. The key phrase is over time. No one ever made a goal and achieved it overnight. You don’t have to have the most talent; you just need the best habits paired with the best work ethic. As Michael Jordan says, “You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”

That quote from Michael Jordan reminds me of the days on the half field in spring training doing pitchers’ fielding practice. Yes, believe it or not, pitchers work on their fielding every day in spring training. There is a very specific play that we practice thousands of times during spring training. When a ground ball is hit to the first baseman, covering first base becomes the pitcher’s responsibility. As a pitcher, you need to understand the foot speed of the hitter to know how quickly to get to the bag. It’s not just getting to first base and covering the bag; there is a very specific route that must be taken to produce consistent results. Messing up this play can be very costly to the pitcher and his team, so we practice it thousands of times in spring training. Every time a ball is hit to the right side of the infield the pitcher’s first response is to break towards first base. It must become an involuntary reaction. It must be an ingrained habit. Nothing drives a manager crazier than when a pitcher doesn’t cover first base on a right infield hit or grounder. It’s an easy out when done properly. There is no time for the pitcher to pause; this play is a core part of your identity as a pitcher. The slightest pause can mean a base hit that should have been an easy out. A pitcher with great fielding habits creates great results and a pitcher with poor fielding habits creates poor results.

Great habits create superior results. Initially, new behaviors take considerable energy and will power as you’re creating your new normal. However, well-established good habits are energy feeders rather than energy drainers. In other words, your new habits will fully reimburse you with interest for whatever they seem to drain in their infancy. Once your new behaviors are routine, you will be well on your way to becoming a peak performer who is living world class. Wanting what the high achievers have requires doing what the high achievers do.

Jim Rohn says, “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the cumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that lead us to either fortune or failure.” Everyone can create great habits. It doesn’t take any special talent to create great habits and great routines. Success is waiting for every one of us. Ordinary people all over the world have created extraordinary results and lives because of their habits. Creating a new habit in one part of your life leads you to develop great habits in other parts of your life. Success breeds success and great habits breed other great habits.

We need to measure what’s important to us, look at our goals, and determine what habits we want and need in our lives. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. First, we create our habits and then our habits create us. What are your current habits creating you to be? What will your new behaviors create you to be? Look in the mirror. Do you like what your habits have done to you? Even if you are pretty proud of the person you are right now, dig down to the areas that still need improvement. This could be looking at areas of weakness, or even looking at your strengths. Sometimes strengthening the things that you already naturally succeed in can push you into a new realm of success. By refining your strengths, you can cover your weaknesses long enough to get your life to a place where you have more space to give your weaknesses the time and attention they need. I experienced this process on a physical level with various injuries in my career. I had to strengthen the parts of my body that could compensate for my weaknesses. I had to develop new behaviors that would play to my strengths and relieve my weaknesses from the pressure of performing at the top level for that season.

Whether you determine you are in a season of playing to your strengths or strengthening your weaknesses, you will need to develop new behaviors. Peak performers are born when they commit to life-changing habits. Habits – good and bad – are developed by consistency. If you have consistent bad habits that you are hoping to break, you will need to replace them with consistent new behaviors that are good. You already know this, but actually doing it is the hard part.

Start with something small and trackable that will give you quick results. Give yourself two weeks. Week one, go about your normal habits and keep a small notepad with you and jot down every time you have a thought relating to your goals. Week two, implement a few small changes that you think will give quick results and continue to track your thoughts. For example, if your goal is to live a healthier lifestyle but you’re addicted to the snooze button, allergic to exercise, and never seem to have enough time in the morning for breakfast, here’s an idea of what starting small would look like:

Goals for a healthier lifestyle:

1 Become a morning person

2 Eat 3 full nutritious meals a day

3 Exercise 3 days a week

Week one notes:

 Day 1 - “It’s only 10 AM and I am already drained, exhausted, and super hungry. Can’t wait for my lunch break!”

 Day 2 – “Hit snooze for 30 minutes this AM. I always feel like such a lazy person when I do that. Ran out the door on time, but felt super rushed through everything as usual. I really need to work on this.”

First Step - New Behaviors for week two:

1 Get out of bed 15 minutes earlier

2 Eat breakfast (*doesn’t even have to be healthy yet*)

3 Park in the furthest spot away from every building I go into

Week two notes: